Work on new water supply canal in Gurugram to start by December

The construction of a proposed raw water canal for the Basai water treatment plant (WTP) will start in December, a senior official of Haryana’s irrigation department said, after a meeting in this regard at Chandigarh on Thursday.

He said the Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) is funding the project, as the new canal will feed its Basai water treatment plant with raw Yamuna water.

The cost of the project is estimated at Rs. 160 crore and the capacity of the canal will be 275 cusecs.

The canal will be constructed with concrete materials, unlike the old Gurgaon water supply canal (GWSC), built with soil, 70 years ago. It feeds Basai plant with raw Yamuna water from Kakroi at Sonepat and has a capacity of only 140 cusecs.

The official said the GMDA approved the detailed project report (DPR) for the same about a month ago.

The irrigation department will float a tender, inviting applications for completion of the construction in six months from the date of the award. However, before floating a tender, the irrigation office of Gurugram, which will be constructing the canal, will have to obtain approvals from its head office.

SS Rawat, superintending engineer, irrigation department, Haryana, said, “We have sent the DPR to the Haryana government and once we get an approval, will start the tendering process. Hopefully, we will start construction by December. We need six months (from allotment of work to a contractor) to complete construction of this canal, which will start from the tail-end of the NCR channel at Chandu Budhera water treatment plant and run along the GWSC to Basai plant — roughly three kilometres in length.”

The GMDA is the custodian authority of master water supply of the city. It treats raw Yamuna water it gets from the irrigation department (custodian authority of GWSC and NCR channel) at Basai and Chandu Budhera plants. The two plants get on average 275 to 300 cusecs raw water, per day.

The GMDA is in the need of increasing the supply capacity of Basai water treatment plant, from 270 million litres daily (MLD) to 360 MLD by 2022, to meet the estimated demand.

For this, the authority would also require to enhance raw water capacity as well.

Lalit Arora, GMDA’s chief engineer, said, “We need to enhance the Basai plant’s water supply capacity to 360 MLD over the next two years and for this, we need much more raw water. GWSC, which is the only source of raw water for Basai plant, will be dismantled after the construction of the 275-cusec canal.”

The irrigation department had constructed the NCR channel in 2011.

First Published: Aug 08, 2019 21:20 IST